Snow on Earth

The Lammermuir Hills from the Moorfoots

Snowy Lammermuirs – North of Peebles 2013

There is a magic to snow on earth. It tumbles with wild abandon, yet lands with such softness that all the jagged edges of earth are smoothed away. It’s fiercely cold, and yet insulates so well that a snow hole is an amazing way to stay warm. It’s natures way of telling us to slow down, to stay warm and to hibernate a little.

I find myself drawn naturally inwards in winter, but especially when the snow is lying thickly on the ground. The dark nights and candlelight encourage contemplation, and with the snow comes a delightful quiet. Sounds are muffled, and in this peace I can begin to listen to myself again. During the summer it’s all action, working in the garden, meeting others for lazy walks along the beach, the days are so long that its hard to stop. So when winter and the long nights come round, I smile, draw the curtains, light a candle and take to my sofa with a book, a pen and a blanket.

Snow is a great reason not to go out at night, unless of course there’s heaps of it freshly fallen. Then even at midnight we will wrap up warm and head out into the sparkling wonderland. We did this at the weekend, once it had stopped falling, and had a midnight snowball fight in the local park. We were all alone in a glittering white field beneath the stars. It’s so bright when the snow is thick that we didn’t need torches, and we left our trails in the virgin snow. Our ears sparkled with the silence of snow. It was pure magic, and Mary Oliver’s poem ‘First Snow’ captures some of that magic, suggesting that in the silence lie the answers we’re looking for.

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning, such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain—not a single
answer has been found—
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

By Mary Oliver

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